The present invention provides a simple, low cost way to monitor the status of a bearings health in a piece of rotating industrial equipment. Historically simple transmitter based systems have been employed on industrial machinery for overall machine health and detection of bearing degradation. These devices measure continuously and can be connected to existing control systems (PLC or DCS). The simplest approach is a 420 VT Vibration Transmitter. This loop-powered device measures Velocity (and can include Temperature) and has an End-User price of about $ 400.00. Also, a major consideration is the installation cost, especially for cabling. The present invention provides a low cost battery powered device that includes a close range wireless interface or RFID interface. One that is packaged into a compact unit and requires no setup or configuration. Since the Wireless interface requires no configuration and adds little cost the added value is significant. The MCI can now be integrated into a mobile data collection program. The customer gets round the clock monitoring of machinery and can retrieve the current machine status and data whenever an operator visits the machine.